Where your thoughts are

I stare at her sometimes while we are watching tv. When she catches me we both get a kick out of it. She’d kiss me and nudge my face back towards the television and we let the moment pass. Her eyes would slightly squint at the tv, not because she can’t see, but they’re reacting to what she’s watching. Her left eyebrow raises with intrigue and it’s like the people in the shows are talking directly to her. Her lips even rest apart as if she’s ready to talk back. I wonder what thoughts are living so openly on her expression and what words were caught between those beautiful lips. I wonder if those queues on her face would still exist if she noticed how often I’m watching her instead of the screen. Maybe they are there just for me to notice but it’s much more likely it wouldn’t even matter if I was here at all. She’d be there just as beautiful and just as captivating and just as captivated. It doesn’t matter that I’m here.

I’m not here.

She loves me and we have a good life together, but as I stare at that beautiful smile of hers, I feel like it was never mine. Sure I’ll get a genuine laugh at one of my jokes and her eyes will watch my hands tell the stories I’m too emphatic to just say, but it’s just her reacting to what she’s watching. I’m a romantic comedy and a series of mishaps and unfortunate timing led up to this; my happy ending. I’m a sitcom that’s replayed so much you can recite the punch line of the joke before it’s said. You can have me on low while you scroll through your phone while your parents tell you about the latest hijinks with their kooky neighbor. You know this story so well you could even have me on mute. The problem with living in a rerun is that it doesn’t end. It just gets replayed day after day.

The silent laugh track mocks me in closed captions.

Why does she love me? I spend half of our time together giving her one word responses and the other half complaining about whatever got on my nerves that day. It frustrates me to no end that she doesn’t seem to have a preference. It’s almost like she blinks and it cuts out a choppy scene in the movie that shouldn’t have made it into the final release. It all just seems to bounce off of her like it never happened. Like I’m not here.

I’m the bonus features on the DVD no one watches.

I need someone to talk to about this, but I don’t really know what this is. How do you call up your mom and tell her you don’t exist? The salt crumbles off my mall stand pretzel as we pass by a pharmacy she wants to go in to get new hair dye. Nothing like a crowded mall to make you feel like you stand out. She’s been raving about a new color that looks black in almost every light but has a blue sheen to it when you angle your head down with the right filter. The right hair and the right outfit posted on the right wall at the right time will be sure to narrate your life however you want it to be seen. Blue hair means you don’t care what people think enough to spend $23.75 to dye your hair and show them you don’t care.

Maybe my blue hair filter is on and everyone just assumes I don’t care.

As we’re walking toward the register, I pass the stationary section and run my fingers across the top of a little leather bound book. I turned quickly to examine what I’d just touched, like when you’re startled by what your hand feels on the bus when you pat the chair down and sit without looking. Something about the texture was inviting and warranted another glance. I flipped through the empty journal pages and got a waft of the decadent smell of a stale unopened book. It’s somewhere between the smell of an office building when you’re one of the first people to enter that day and that burnt vanilla candle smell that your flesh of the Earth, Google how to be a hippie, sister in-law uses to meditate. The empty pages looked ready to be filled with something not empty.

Who cares what it wants though? It’s a book.

I gesture at the book to her, an implicit ask on whether or not it would be ok if I had it, and her expression was unfamiliar. She immediately nodded in approval and seemed beatific at the site of me with the little black book. It wasn’t the mechanized sincerity in response to a plot device. She knew I needed this. Maybe this state I’ve been in hadn’t gone unnoticed. I’ve been so wrapped up in being seen I must have missed her watching me too. Just like that, the guilt set in. I have this person in my life that wants me to be happy. When I got home that afternoon, I decided to write about my happiest moment with her, so I never forget how amazing she is again.

The book just started to fill itself.

I had never felt cold like we did in that ski lodge back in Tulsa. It took us about an hour to figure out how to work that old heater and even with it blasting, the space between the door and the baseboards was wide enough that it felt like all of the windows in the room were open. She grew up there and even she couldn’t think of a time she felt that frozen.

We spent the 3 days with no TV and no phones and no problems. Covered from head to toe in blankets, I couldn’t see her, but she was so beautiful in that moment. She was this amazing force connecting me to the world and I just knew that I’d never be happy without her. She wasn’t just connecting me to the world...she was my world.

I’ll never love anyone else.

I was so excited to share this moment with her that I let her read over my shoulder as I wrote. Her eyes slightly squinted at the words, not because she couldn’t see, but because they were reacting to what she was reading. Her left eyebrow raised with intrigue and it’s like my words painted a picture just for her. Her lips perched apart and she was ready to speak back to it. I wondered what thoughts were living so openly on her expression and what words were caught between those beautiful lips. I wondered why she was crying. This time she wasn’t just reacting. This time she had something she wanted to say to me.

“I’m from Florida.”

I was thinking about Mary.

I guess the part of me that always felt alone and empty never left that frozen room. There was nothing I could do to unwrite what she read. She was lost to me now like I’ve been lost to her all these years. The next few months were a blur of vending machine dinners in this run down motel after she asked me to leave and divorce counsels I practically begged to leave myself. She could have taken everything for all I cared and it still wouldn’t have made what I had done to her right. She could have taken everything but she insisted that we split everything. We each left with what we brought in. I think she wanted to make it like the marriage never happened.

It was like I was never there.

When all was said and done I had an overpacked suitcase filled with all my clothes and a laundry hamper filled with all of my books; including a little black journal there was no question she wouldn’t want. The divorce left me with something in the ballpark of $20,000, but no home, no car...no wife. The sum definitely would have been enough to secure a small apartment on the other side of town so I wouldn’t run into her and it would be enough to get a car to get me to work and back every day. I thought about the last few years of not feeling here and I realized that I never would be here now. I checked out of the motel leaving my suitcase and my clothes inside. I left all that I had from the settlement on the bed after taking a few dollars out for the motel bill, a new little black book, and a one way ticket to Tulsa.